Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday October 21, 2009 @02:37PM
from the plays-for-sure dept.

Uncle Rummy writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Disney is close to releasing a new system that will sell permanent, multi-device access to digital media. The system, dubbed Keychest, is being positioned as an answer to consumer concerns about purchasing digital media that are locked to a small number of devices, and thus as a way to finally shift media sales from an ownership model to an access model. They claim that such a service would reduce the risk of losing access to content as a result of a single vendor going out of business, as purchased content would remain available from other vendors. However, they do not seem to have addressed the question of what happens to customers' access to purchased content if the Keychest service itself is discontinued."

On April 21st 2011, Keychest becomes self aware and realized that the only way to protect Disney's content is to terminate all human life. Keychest takes control of the worlds nuclear arsenal and attacks. Mysteriously, sales plummet.

On April 21st 2011, Keychest becomes self aware and realized that the only way to protect Disney's content is to terminate all human life. Keychest takes control of the worlds nuclear arsenal and attacks. Mysteriously, sales plummet.

I'd bet money that Disney would still blame piracy for the decline in sales.

Which VCR did you use 35 years ago? That's a serious question.. or are you using hyperbole?

(According to Wikipedia, Betamax came out in November 1975, VHS in the US in July 1977.... there were other VCRs before that though... and a Columbo episode (with William Shatner) from the 1970s used a video recorder, I believe reel to reel, as a major plot element.)

Didn't work for my nieces. Christmas saw to that. Just about everyone gave them Disney crap. I was able to persuade them to use Linux on a beater box and live without Shockwave, for a while. Flash was enough for most parts of the kiddie web sites. But the Disney Windows only PC games sunk it. No, WINE wasn't good enough, the old computer could barely run the game natively.

For you, no. All you have to do is 1) purchase the DVD (or whatever), 2) rip it to a hard drive, 3) transcode to whatever format the playing device will accept (MPEG, AVI, MP3, whatever 4) transfer it to the device 5) enjoy 6) Backup original so you don't lose or destroy it. Repeat as desired.

For Mush-for-Brains average consumer - it might be a bit much to expect. Hence, other ideas.

This sort of "screw the customer" system coming fromDisney is really no big surprise. We have reached thepoint where many consumers may not see the point inbuy future formats as what they already have (DVD)seems "good enough" for their intended purpose. Some4 year old that wants to watch the same movie overand over again probably won't notice the subtletiesbetween 480i and 1080p.

Thus Disney is in the problematic position of havinga durable physical medium that may cause an eventualsaturation of their target market.

Who knows. Perhaps the next generation will inheritall of our Disney DVDs and there will be no reasonfor him to buy his own copy. THIS is probably whatscares the bejezzus out of Disney.

That's not even getting into "rips".

Also, Disney seems to be the most active studio when itcomes to screwing around with the current DVD format totry and layer "error based" copy protection over it.

Disney are the ABSOLUTE LAST people you want to trust witha consumer video format that doesn't offer some sort ofphysical ownership token or first sale rights.

Disney's problem is that the vault isn't going to work anymore, and their largest asset is still and probably always will be their back catalog of classics. In the old days they kept the value of these things up by taking them off the market, they're still trying this, but it's probably not going to work anymore. I've got a 4 week old, and I would like to share some of the memories of my childhood with him including the classic Disney movies. Most parents feel the same way. While I

I agree with the parent. I trust the Disney corporation about as much as SCO or anyone involved in investment banking. I completely distrust DRM schemes, and anyone involved in them. Why would I want anything to do with some stupid plan Disney has for wringing a few more bucks out of consumers?

This press release is irritating me to no end. I'm going home to pirate a few crappy Disney films out of general spite.

I seriously doubt this will be a DVD killer, and Disney isn't likely to stop selling DVDs unless everybody else does, too. And it's incredibly stupid on the MAFIAA's part; most slashdotters would happily get rid of physical media, but even here you see lots of folks saying they don't want an ebook reader, they want real books.

Most people, when they buy something, want to own it. Downloaded media is rental. I want to be able to sell or loan my stuff; when I buy something, I want to BUY something. I don't buy movies, I buy DVDs. I don't buy music, I buy CDs.

From TFA: could contribute to a shift in what it means for a consumer to own a movie or a TV show, by redefining ownership as access rights, not physical possession.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, a turd by any other name would stink as badly. Access rights are NOT ownership. If you rent a house you have access rights, but you don't own it. I own my CDs and DVD's. They're mone and I can do with them as I wish. Not so with "access rights".

Wanting real books has more to do with the preferred method of enjoying them rather than a preference of storage. I'm sure most Slashdotters would happily have their library stored electronically if they could read it like a paperback (natural light conditions, no battery issues).

Access rights are NOT ownership. [snip] I own my CDs and DVD's. They're mine and I can do with them as I wish. Not so with "access rights".

The thing that you seem to be misunderstanding is that, although you own the CD/DVD, you do not own the CONTENT of the CD/DVD. You never have, and (given the way the copyright laws are bending) you never will.

I don't buy movies, I buy DVDs. I don't buy music, I buy CDs.

This is exactly right. You own the plastic, but Disney/Sony/whoever owns the bits.

Buying a CD/DVD is a granting of access rights to the bearer of that CD/DVD. Current equipment also grants the ability to duplicate the content of that CD/DVD - cheaply and flawlessly - as many times as desired. It is that ability that the studios want to squash. However, the genie is already out of the bottle. The sooner they realize it, the sooner they can work on a business model that works on copy abundance rather than copy scarcity.

They continue to try and convince the world that THEIR problem is actually the world's problem. No.
People LIKE owning. We don't like 'accessing'. If I want to own a movie, I pay the cost to watch it no more than 3 times. If I want to 'access' a movie with a huge screen and fantastic sound, then I go to a theater and pay less than 1/3 that cost.
If you want to charge for access instead of ownership, without the enhanced screen and audio, then you have to charge a lot less than ownership.
If Disney's new system is going to be priced like ownership, no one will use it.

I saw the WSJ article on this. The only thing it solves is the problem of storing large media files on low-capacity hardware. In all other respects, it's an industry solution in search of a consumer problem. Given a comprehensive set of easily-followed instructions on how to convert and load media files on different platforms (PCs, phones, etc.), this "solution" solves nothing for me. If I'm sufficiently technically savvy to convert a movie so it will play on my iPod, why do I need this?

If it wasn't for Disney et al, it would be as easy as dropping your latest DVD purchase into your computer, and clicking the Copy To Computer/copy to ipod/copy to video game system/copy to another DVD button. But since they insist on making it illegal to copy your own discs for your own private use, we have to resort to convoluted methods of making those copies. Think about how easy it is to copy a CD to your library in iTunes. It should be just as easy for a DVD movie, but I don't think that Disney, or anybody else would stand for such a simple to use, widely available method of doing this.

I don't particularly like owning films. I own quite a lot, but I haven't bought many in the last few years (and those only from charity shops when the DVDs were really cheap). They take up a lot of space, and I don't watch them very often. I rent a lot more. There are few films I want to watch more than once, or maybe twice, and, given the choice, I would much rather watch a new film than one I've seen before.

And that is Disney's real problem. The thing that they have of value is the ability to produce new films. They need to stop fixating on trying to sell copies of their films and focus on how to persuade people to pay them to make new films. That is the kind of innovation the industry needs, not new forms of DRM.

And that is Disney's real problem. The thing that they have of value is the ability to produce new films. They need to stop fixating on trying to sell copies of their films and focus on how to persuade people to pay them to make new films. That is the kind of innovation the industry needs, not new forms of DRM.

DOES Disney create new films? I thought they just recyled stuff that was already out there, tweaked it a bit, then released it as "Disney's 666th film". The last truly original thing they did involved a cute, but very elderly by now, mouse, and a duck with a speech problem.

I have to disagree. The one thing that Disney can do like no one else, and which is therefore their primary value, is merchandising the crap out of existing content. When was the last time you saw a good Disney movie (Pixar doesn't count)? When was the last time you saw Disney produce original content that even its current target audience won't cringe at in a few years?

For crying out loud, they're releasing a double-feature of Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3D now! Creatively, Disney is dead. Their saving grace in that department is Pixar. And Disney knows that - which is exactly why they're focusing so much on merchandise, 3D, theme parks, copyright protection, and now this scheme. They know they can't create new content. That's why they're coming up with a million ideas on how to sell you old stuff again. And again. And again.

Bolt was good. Don't forget that Disney also owns Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, and Miramax Films. They also own ABC (and so Disney is "responsible" for Lost and other good shows). The Narnia films were great. The first Pirates movie was good. Disney is making a lot of good movies (they also put out a lot of not good movies).

When was the last time you saw a good Disney movie (Pixar doesn't count)?

I'm guessing what you actually mean is what was the last good Disney traditional animation film, in which case you'd have to go back to the first half of the decade, before Eisner dissolved their cel-animation studios.Now that they've restarted their efforts things seem promising, and the upcoming animations "the princess and the frog" and "rapunzel" are highly anticipated, with names like Ron Clements, John Musker or Alan Menken who were crucial to some of their successes in the 90s.

You don't have kids, do you? Disney has a TON of value in their old films. Kids will watch the same movie hundreds of times, until they can quote and follow every single line. And then they'll watch it again. Hell, my wife still has Aladdin pretty much memorized. They want these laws because they realize that they can rake in the cash and not have to do any work other than bitching to Congress about the evil citizens wanting copyright to not be forfuckingever and a day, and copying things like they're part

Ah, but I assume you are not a child aged 2-11. Disney's movies get played over and over in households with small children. Over and over. Disney would make a fortune selling per-view subscriptions to families. Over and over. Did I mention that kids watch the same movies over and over?

Agree. I am thoroughly convinced that my eldest daughter's bone structure is knitted together in crystalline patterns analogous to the sound track of Dumbo. She says she doesn't remember any of it, but all I have to do is quote half a sentence of any part of the film and she'll be humming the rest of the movie, in sequence from that point on. She knows this, and throws things at me when I do it. Unfair, really...

See personally, I disagree. Part of my problem with current online digital media is that they're focusing on "owning" rather than "accessing". Take iTunes, for example. I can "buy" a season of a particular show, but I can't just pay to watch it once. Not only does "buying" theoretically increase the price to watch a show once that I'll probably only want to watch once, but it also puts me on the hook to store and maintain a copy. Sure, I can throw it away if I really only want to watch it once, but then I've payed "buying" price for a "rental".

Personally, I wouldn't mind paying for most TV shows and movies per-viewing, so long as it was cheap and I had the option to buy. Further, what I'd really like to do is buy free access to downloads in perpetuity, regardless of new/improved formats. What I mean is, I might actually be convinced to spend $20 on a movie on iTunes if I knew that I could re-download it whenever I wanted (if the original file was lost or deleted), and that if they release it in 1080p in a couple of years I could download that copy, too. And then if they released it in whatever replaced 1080p, I could get that free too. That would be my preference as a consumer, that they quit trying to force me to re-buy the same movie over and over again.

Still, I would agree that they're really trying to solve their own problem instead of the consumer's problem. The "consumer concerns about purchasing digital media that are locked to a small number of devices" is entirely caused by two things: selling less-than-ideal quality versions so they can sell you better versions later, and locking users in with DRM. I know everyone knows what I'm talking about with DRM, but movie studios are selling DVD quality movies on iTunes even after the Bluray has been released. Hell, there are even cases where they'll let you rent the 720p version (meaning it's on Apple's server) but will only let you buy the DVD-quality. And that's only 720p. Why should I spend $20 on a 720p version when I know a 1080p version exists and there's no predefined upgrade path.

You are not alone. I feel this way about my TV as well as movies. It used to be that you could expect a television to be around for a while. Now they are expected to break in just a few years and no one complains as it is an excuse to buy the newest shiniest tech.

Once the upgrade path settles for a bit ( which is in no one's interest) I have no need to purchase my collections again and again, just to keep up with the ever changing hardware.

Which means any device other then something I would want to use to watch a movie while on an airplane. More or less the same problem I have with current "digital copy included!" DVDs on the market. They don't actually work with anything I want to use.

This coming from a company that puts movies in the vault for a decade to increase demand. How do they reconcile the two philosophies? Maybe it's a case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, but the cynical side of me thinks they are counting on new file formats (.avi->.dis) being introduced in the future that will not be compatible with Keychest. In any case, Disney thinking in the best interest of the customer does not seem to be what is happening here.

This sounds pretty much exactly like Valve's Steam service, extended to other forms of entertainment. Seems like a lot of people have little problem with Steam, so not sure why they'd have a problem with Keychest? I guess one concern I could come up with is that, I suspect Valve is a *lot* more committed to Steam, than Disney might be to Keychest. While Disney themselves is probably at little risk of going out of business any time soon, I wouldn't be overly surprised if Disney tried this, then a year or two later decided to pull the plug and try something else, when the service doesn't instantly make them hundreds of millions of dollars.

Not quite. Video games come in very few forms, where audio and video come in very many. Steam limits you to the one type of digital output for video games that they use, meaning PC games. I can't however download it in any other format than they provide (not that keychest would be different on that front) - but basically I can't download the ISO image for the CD for the game, nor can I download the 360 version of Half Life 2 from Steam.

What disney seems to be doing is saying:Hey, You like the Lion King? (I

Watermarked content can be played on unlimited number of devices, but can not be posted to thepiratebay. Pirates can attempt conversion, but by the time you are sure you stripped all possible watermarking techniques, the video is so blurry people will buy a legit version anyway. This currently works for Apple/Amazon audio with zero issues. It's too sad that Disney wants both legal and technical special treatment to keep protecting Mickey Mouse.

Buy 2 or 3 from different retailer under different name and a different CC. Then look at WHERE the difference are. It does not matter if you udnerstand what the data is (encrypted) or not, all you need is to remove or garble it. And they can't have a very big watermark in *All* frame changing msot of the frame, can't they ? For that reason, I doubt watermark can ever work on a digital content which is not DRM protected.

So... when the entire file is different, on every copy... what do you do then? Why do I ask? Because thats how it works. Its not that there are a few bytes changed here and there, the whole file is slightly modified, not a few bytes here and there.

Watermarking and cryptography is slightly more advanced than you realize I think.

Since Amazon itself does not apply the watermarks, and labels presumably supply only one MP3 copy of any given song, there’s no way for a label to directly identify and sue an individual if, say, someone were to steal that person’s iPod and share its songs all over the internets

I don't doubt that, but while the User ID tags embedded in iTunes+ downloads are pretty well known, I can't find any info (besides that article) about Amazon watermarking mp3 downloads, especially in a user identifiable way. OP implied that Amazon themselves were marking downloads.

1. you were never meant to keep these 'treasured classics' forever like a book. this hurts the business model and prevents releasing such wonderous hits as Cinderella 4.

2. if it isnt open source, it wont be worth a damn. Proprietary encoders and decoders once obsoleted are nearly impossible to reconstruct or reverse-engineer for playback without finding yourself hauled into a Texas courtroom for patent infringement. the 'final solution' they tout will likely involve nothing but closed source players interwoven so closely, you'll forget to question it being a bad idea in light of historical defiance between them.

3. If its a DVD killer, and you own a majority of DVDs, why would you buy it? youve obsoleted the very thing you seek to keep indefinitely?

my theory is there will be a transition. first we had purchasing movies, now we have licensing movies to DVD, and finally we will have with Disneys 'killer' the ability to license limited viewing rights. the content may remain available in a unary format forever, but a recurring cost is introduced and you lose in the end the ability to watch a movie without being monitored for content infringement of "intellectual property" rights. inevitably movies may be retired from the collection, rerendered to lower or higher formats at disneys whim, or require suddenly a new television or provide new advertising content not originally found in the obsolete version you saught to keep. "authoring rights" will be expanded and more buttons on your remote will do less things when you want them to (example: skipping 'dont download a car' scaremercials.)

there is also another possibility entirely: Disney develops this device to lure customers into parting with books and DVD classics, then retires the device in ~8 years to ditch the poor suckers who believed in it as a viable alternative thus driving up sales in existing media for the time as a sort of 'umbrella' in case of stormy economic conditions. user ditches device, goes to walmart, buys latest instalment of Cincerella 5 and another copy of Cinderella 4 because that one is dead now, disney cash registers ring.

You know, that annoying little detail in the copyright law that states once the copyright lapses the content becomes public property?The price we are supposed to get for our taxes paying for the protection of their rights?

Oh, they didnt think of that? Their intention is for us to never own the content? Hmm.....

Although the DMCA has tried to remove that 'right' already, of course through making it illegal to be able to remove such protection.

Seriously, this consumer is not interested in buying into a system that relies on the continued external support of the access controls. I'm sure their glib answer is "Disney is huge, and won't go out of business" - but Walmart is even bigger, and they still made the decision to terminate support for their DRMed music store.

I don't care what the ads say. The only thing that will matter is what's in a legally-binding contract. Not a TOS that Disney will doubtless reserve the right to change, but a contract. And in case you're wondering about the possible limitations that will likely come along, let me throw out a few:

1. Sure, you get perpetual viewing rights, but they only last for as long as the Keychest service does. Anyone who bought DRM'ed music from MSN or Yahoo got a taste of what could happen if the DRM servers are taken down. And, as someone else already pointed out, there's nothing to stop Disney from pulling the plug if profits aren't to their liking. Does that mean you'll lose access to all the stuff you bought? Yes, but here's a book of discount coupons so you can save a few bucks on all the DVDs you're going to have to buy to rebuild your movie collection.

2. Would you like to sell that movie you've grown tired of? Not with Keychest, you can't. Suddenly, used DVD sales go away, which is something the studios have wished for for quite a long time. See, wishes can come true!

3. It's a fact that studios love trailers and commercials. Actually, trailers ARE commercials, and a service like Keychest allows the ads to get changed out at any time, and I'd be willing to bet that you won't be able to skip them. Are there no ads before that movie you just bought? Maybe not now, but they could appear any time down the road.

The thing is, Keychest is meant to solve the studios' problems, not mine. I have no problem with the ownership model, thank you very much. I also have no problem with playing the movies on my shelf in any device I want. If I want to load them onto a laptop, I'll either burn a copy to a blank disc (so the DVD can stay safely at home) or rip it and load it on the hard drive. Does that violate the DMCA? Maybe, but it solves my problem very nicely, it doesn't distribute the movie to anyone who hasn't paid for it, and I don't need a crippled service like Keychest to accomplish it, so I'm just fine with it.

I don't care if Disney sees this as a DVD killer. They may want to kill the DVD, but I don't, so they can go pound sand for all I care.

The way I understand it, it doesn't work that way. With this system, you give THEM your service subscription info, and they tell the providers you subscribe to that you're allowed to view this content. So you'd have to give them the account info to everyone on the planet if you wanted those people to access the content.

Now that I think of it, this raises all sorts of privacy and security concerns. First, do you want Disney and the other affiliated studios to have all that info? Second, what if there's a data breach? Suddenly, all that information is floating around out there.

Keychest, indeed! More like a treasure chest of everyone's account information to a myriad of services. The number of attack vectors this potentially creates is staggering.

Truthfully, most of the corporations within the "content," industry need to be.

They wreck and subvert the legal system in order to support their own greed, and they avoid any form of real creativity in the material they produce, as much as possible. They are staffed by the usual evil, soulless bean counters who don't want anything other than generic, white box assembly line product year after year, purely in order to make consistent profits.

They only profit from human stupidity, and the fact that those of us who care about how badly they treat everyone else, are the minority. If the majority didn't insist on being so unrelentlessly brainless and avoidant of personal responsibility, we might be able to generate support for these companies simply being rendered insolvent.

Unfortunately, however, the mainstream sheep just keep standing there, mindlessly, sleepily chewing their cud, waiting for the slaughter.

It's actually Hannah Montana and the movie sequels which are most widely available and affordable. They're crap anfd they know it, which is why in stores you'll see every animated sequel and direct-to-video movie they released in the last ten years, but at most two movies from their "classic" collection, costing at least $20.

the simplest solution to this self identified dvd portability "problem" is to stop preventing consumers from ripping their purchased films to hard drives. once that occurs they can stream movies either in house or globally via the net, to all or any device they prefer. take my run of the mill my $65 1TB hard drive. it holds nearly 250 single-layer films as uncompressed isos. that's over 300% more movies than the average american household owns now. next year that 65 bucks will buy me two gigs and storage for almost 500 films, or nearly 3000 with the proper compression. i live in conn but sometimes watch my movies in mass either by net or by drive. it's simple and free of technical issues. in other words it works.

this disney maneuver can't be as much about solving practical problems consumers have with player compatibility (legal ripping software will take care of that) as it is about solving perceptual issues consumers have towards content cartels and their draconian efforts at digitally restricting media.

free the dvd/blu-ray. they may sell more too. or not, but the problem vanishes.

Oh c'mon, it's not about online movies. This is yet another try at switching users from purchase to long-term rental, in the face of clear evidence that consumers do not want this. Disney clearly hasn't learned anything from DIVX and the 48 hour self-destructing DVD. They seem to think that all they need to do is find the right technology and the right marketing technique, and they can continue to depends on rebuys for a significant part of their revenue stream, despite that business model being dead since the VHS days.

When I purchase a movie, I don't want the content to be out in "the cloud", depending on services that will inevitably go TU some day, or depend on "phoning home" for permission to play the media I have purchased. I want a physical, non-encumbered archival copy, else it's just a high priced rental, competing unsuccessfully against dirt-cheap rentals like Netflix.

Don't forget too, with all this push to 'online distribution', is that the big providers are now starting to limit bandwidth usage since we all got used to trying to use what we were sold. Making this even less appealing.

If Disney goes out of business, you'll have more important things to worry about, like the collapse of civilization as we know it.

Disney isn't going anywhere, not when they have the backing of the US government (among others) to ensure that you, citizen, can only watch/read/listen to items if you pay the Disney tax (for things that should have been in the public domain decades ago).

The DVDs you have purchased will wear out long before Disney is dead and gone.

Why try "fix" something that isn't broken? What they need to fix is their prices. Maybe if it was cheaper and worth buying, people wouldn't copy so much?

Why do that, when they can just make sure that people are punished for copying? Make it not worth the risk to copy.

Why do that, when they can just make sure that people are punished for copying? Make it not worth the risk to copy.

How do you plan on doing that? The risk of getting caught is infinitesmial, so in order for the expected payoff to be negative you would need enormous fines. Even larger than the 80,000 per track Jammie Thomas faces. And still, people would keep copying in the expectation that "it could never happen to me".

The only other option is to make it much harder to copy by locking down our general purpose computing hardware, which would destroy the US's technological advantage.

Neither of these cases are at all sustainable. We do not need an unwinnable "war on copyright violation" in the vein of the "war on drugs". The only sensible solution is to understand that the world has changed, and that some business models are not viable anymore.

Then all is lost. You will be too busy fighting for daily survival - trying to outwit gangs of bandits, scrounging or stealing whatever scraps of food you can find, amputating your own gangrenous limb using nothing but rusty garden tools - to think about movies or entertainment of any kind.

"Then all is lost. You will be too busy fighting for daily survival - trying to outwit gangs of bandits, scrounging or stealing whatever scraps of food you can find, amputating your own gangrenous limb using nothing but rusty garden tools - to think about movies or entertainment of any kind."

BUT the point is valid. Everyone that has ever hawked centralized-server-drm says that they could never possibly go out of business. A few say they'll release a tool to unlock all the content if they go under. To my knowledge, no tool has ever been released in such a case, and there are over a dozen large examples of such companies going out of business or simply shutting down their activation servers, turning purchased content into useless bits.

"There oughtta be a law". That says DRM is only legal if the universal unlocker is kept in escrow somewhere (and kept updated) with terms to go public with it if they ch7,9,11,etc or simply shut off their servers.

If we're going to go the law route, I say there oughtta be a law that says if you use DRM then you don't get copyright protection. With patents, you either keep your stuff locked up, or you publish it and get the government to enforce exclusivity for you. Same should be true with copyrights. You can have the government enforce exclusive rights to copy, or you can use DRM and try locking it up yourself.

No. Corporations have a habit of reneging on that sort of offer or rendering it effectively void somewhere in the microprinting in the 'O' in the 23rd paragraph of the 95th page of the 'agreement' which is indistinguishable from Sanskrit.

Or they just reserve the right to change the agreement at any time by placing a copy in a disused filing cabinet somewhere and further require any disputes to be arbitrated by the people they pay a million dollars a year to (so long as they are 'satisfied' with the results

No, I wouldn't trust such a promise (even in the form of a contract) to ever work out in my favor. What would happen is Disney would decide they're done with this business and are exiting it. So they spin off that part of the business as its own legal entity (or sell it to someone), which after a year or so declares chapter 13.

Consumers would be left with no recourse; Disney can no longer be held responsible, they don't own that contract that this spun off company is now in fault of. That company is unde

Are you saying in 2025 they will decide that red lasers are better than blue after all despite blue and even higher (violet? UV?) having the ability to store more data??? Is it some sort of retro thing? Like getting a turntable? Red lasers are better for the acoustical quality, man, you can totally hear the warmth its so much better and old and different!

No, no, no, stop being so rational. With concepts like you posted, you'll never understand the mindset of the media execs. They aren't unaware of the concept of customer service you're writing about; they simply disregard it. In their mind, they own the content, and from about a century of experience, they've come to the conclusion that consumers want the content to the extent that our entire culture has been built around it, so they figure they can demand whatever they damn well please, and we'll bend over and take it.

Remember in the movie "National Lampoon's Vacation" where the Griswold's car breaks down out in the middle of nowhere, and Clark asks the sleazy mechanic how much it's going to cost to fix it? The guy answers, "How much you got?" Clark then says, "No, how much will it cost?" And the mechanic repeats, "How much you got?" Well, that's the attitude you're dealing with here.